| Abstract |
Different plant forms compete for limited resources andvarious factors influence outcomes. Usually overlooked, thephysical environment, particularly the soil profile, is not onlya key factor, but also a dynamic one. That is, the edaphicenvironment in which plants are rooted cannot be mappedonce and then taken as “covered”. Soils are essentiallybiologically modified sediments and remain in a state of fluxin terms of physical earth processes (erosion, transportationand deposition). These processes fundamentally controlconditions for plant growth, principally through control of SoilMoisture Balance (SMB). We describe two extremes of SMBand how incision processes are required to allow establishmentof woody plants in what are naturally grasslands or similar.The physical landscape process (incision) is the same in bothcases, but the enabling factor in terms of SMB is exactly theopposite for establishment of woody plants. This stark contrastunderlines the need for ecologists to be landscape or “terrain”literate in order to understand the conventional “bio-centric”factors in their physical earth surface context. In other words,the stage in which biological interactions occur, is not static;rather it is part of the unfolding drama that is ecology. |
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